‘Nuclear winter’ threat dismissed by Thatcher govt, papers reveal

Threats of a “nuclear winter” in the wake of a catastrophic war with the Soviet Union were rejected as alarmist scaremongering by the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government, Home Office papers reveal.

Intriguingly, officials
working under the Thatcher administration were more concerned
with tracking the actions of anti-nuclear campaigners and
lobbyists who opposed the deployment of cruise missiles, papers
released by the National Archives on Tuesday suggest.

One file, called “Nuclear winter – global atmospheric
consequences of nuclear war,” indicates that government
officials tasked with emergency defense planning in 1984
concluded they did not need to research the potential impacts of
a so-called Nuclear Winter.

Other government figures agreed with the Home Office’s emergency
planning division that the theory did not require serious
assessment, an internal memo dated December 1984 notes.

The confidential documents were contained in a cache of
classified files released under Britain’s 30-Year Rule, which
requires the publication of sensitive government documents after
three decades.

The end of civilization?

Advocates of the hypothesis suggested these toxic clouds would
hang in the Earth’s stratosphere for prolonged periods, depriving
human civilization of adequate sunlight. It was also estimated
ground level temperatures would plummet for months or even years,
making life for survivors of such a disaster very difficult.

Following a slew of newspaper articles suggesting that US
scientists backed the concept, MPs serving under late PM Margaret
Thatcher raised concerns. Alluding to its “policy of
deterrence,” the government responded, saying it believed
nuclear warfare was “extremely unlikely.”

A Home Office document, released by the National Archives, said
the nuclear winter hypothesis had been enthusiastically adopted
by the UK’s “anti-nuclear movement” and wrongly treated
it as “accepted scientific fact.”

But this perspective was ill-informed, the memo suggested, as it
ignored crucial clarifications by scientific experts who were
studying the theory at the time.

Covert surveillance war

Home Office files released Tuesday indicate the Conservative
Thatcher-led government was much more interested in monitoring
peace and anti-nuclear campaigners on the ground in Britain than
delving further into the social, health and environmental
repercussions of a nuclear war.

Several key anti-nuclear campaigns in Britain were effectively
under surveillance, internal government correspondence suggests.

“[The] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is planning to
… recapture its earlier momentum by major campaigns against
cruise and Trident in 1985,” Home Office papers said.

The Home Office had considered the possibility that CND was a
Soviet front organization, bolstered by clandestine funding from
the then-communist bloc, but eventually ruled this possibility
out.

Another government memo said Scotland’s anti-nuclear Faslane
peace camp was “reported to be bankrupt.”

PR war

In an effort to turn the tide of public opinion, the Thatcher
government considered offering PR and financial support to
pro-nuclear organizations.

“Continued government support – both financial and through
the provision of nuclear PR material – will be necessary,” a
previously classified document states.

And in anticipation of a nuclear catastrophe, the Home Office
commissioned architectural sketches detailing homemade nuclear
shelters in special pamphlets.

The BBC World Service also drew up a plan to offer 24/7 services
from specially designated nuclear-proofed sites, as emergency
broadcasting could be difficult in such a climate due to damaged
transmitters.

But the Foreign Office said such proposed measures were
unnecessary, the product of rife “speculation” and simply too
costly.

Then-Home Office minister Giles Shaw was keen to play down fears
of a nuclear winter common to the Cold War era, according to one
previously classified document.

“The fundamental problem,” he wrote, “is to devise
an initiative which can be sure to counter the impact of the
theory without… stimulating exactly the further controversy its
proponents desire.”

Approximately 12 months later, however, the perils of nuclear
technology resurfaced fiercely in the wake of the Chernobyl
disaster in Ukraine.

Following the catastrophe, internal government papers released
under the 30-year rule indicate that ministers were once again
concerned about Britain’s anti-nuclear lobbyists gaining ground.

“The main objective
of the government in commenting publicly… should be to counter
the view… that the British nuclear power program should be cut
back because of the Soviet disaster,” the papers
concluded.